Ira

That'd be negative phototropism or antiphototropism.

Someday someone will make a hybrid that isn't hideous. That's my biggest problem with them, they're all ugly. If someone hybridized cardinal tetras and Bristlenoses and got a bristlenose colored like a cardinal, I'd buy some.

The way I see it is you're probably not going to be introducing too many new fish to the system that often so you won't introduce many diseases, especially if you quarantine any new fish. And as long as you keep the fish happy and healthy they'll be able to fight most diseases. Their immune systems are probably 100X more effective overall than anything we could do for them.

I'd consider my fish to be worth at least $750 and I don't use UV. Well, $750 to me. Making a guess at the cost to replace them I'd probably say it'd only be about $450 assuming I could buy similar size fish. Or $200ish+3 years.

Good luck getting someone to quarantine them, apparently most will only deal with fish wholesalers. I think redwood aquatics and the fish tank only import fish for their own sale.

I don't think anyone has ever gotten silver sharks to spawn in a tank so I'd say it has nothing to do with spawning. Mine used to do the same thing. I think the wiggling might be something of a dominance thing and the chasing is...Well, just chasing. They like to chase each other around the tank. It's all normal.

A UV sterilizer would probably be uneccesary, but they're in the range of $400+.

I just went to catch some mosquito larvae out of my pond because I noticed there were a few. And when I was doing it I noticed there are buttloads of daphnia in there. For any of you not up on technical lingo that means somewhere between heaps^2(Heaps&heaps) and bazillions. I think it might be because of what Caryl said, that hers seem to stay in the sunlight. This is the first sunny day in a while and all the other days I've looked have been cloudy days. Maybe when it's cloudy they hide at the bottom of the pond where you can't find them?

I tried feeding one big mealworm to my cichlids, they didn't seem particularly interested(Kinda surprising) But it was the first time I'd tried them. I haven't tried any since then because I didn't want to slow down the mealworms reproducing. I admit, I'm not putting much effort into the mealworms, I'm just basically leaving it alone and seeing what happens.

Mine took a few months to get beetles, now it seems I've got a handful of dead beetles and a few little larvae. I think I nearly killed them all by trying to feed them apples. I'd put them in the oat bran the worms were in and then forget them for...Well...way too long. Then everything got really nasty and smelly. They seem to do better if I just leave them alone, which I've read should be ok. I was thinking it might just be easier to buy the mealworms instead of trying to culture them. Last time I looked it was something like $20 for 1000 mealworms from biosuppliers.

Have you tried keeping the males together as they grow up? I've heard several times that as long as the males grow up together they'll be fine and won't fight...Well, I guess won't fight more than most siblings, anyway. But if you seperate them at all then you can never put them back together again. I gave breeding fighters a try once, intending to test that with the males, but didn't have any luck getting fry.

I don't think a feeder ring would work for my cichlids. I gave up on using feeder cones after I'd had them for a few months because I got sick of them knocking the suction cup off the side of the tank and sinking it. They're now about 5 times as big. I love my big fishies.

Can't you throw it in storage somewhere? It'd be a shame to sell it to just anyone if you can't find a good home for it.

My smaller gold doesn't have them. So, I'm wondering if they only appear when the fish reaches a certain size, or if they're just too small to see when the fish is small. They seem to be getting more noticable on my big gold severum.

We've been using about $200 in power every month and only about $20-30 of that is the tanks. If I had a few grand laying around and wasn't on tank water I'd definitely consider buying it off you.

There are way mroe than 3-4 people with marine tanks in NZ. There's gotta be at least 5 or 6! Really frustrating how expensive and difficult to set up even a basic marine tank here in NZ is. In the US I think setting up a nice marine tank is about as expensive as a nice tropical tank here in NZ. Man, I wanna move back to the US. Access to any fish you could want for cheap, cheap hardware...Too bad I didn't get into fish before I moved to NZ.

When I'm doing it I throw the salt in a small seive then just swish it up and down in the water. I find it easier than sucking out a bucket of water, disolving the salt in it then pouring the bucket back in, or filling up a couple cups with water.

Do severums normally have teeth? I noticed ages ago that my big gold severum has a couple rows of little black dots in his mouth that looked like teeth. But I was looking today and they a few of them are definitely little triangular bits poking out from the skin. But, my other gold and my green don't have them. I've never heard any mention of them having teeth. Maybe I should get him some fishy toothpaste, black teeth don't look so good.

You're mistaken, I don't have any feeder discus.

See, that's just the typical discus owner, thinking puffers are full of air.

I've had the same problem trying to get bugs. I put a bag full of daphnia into my pond and they all seem to have died. In fact, the only bugs I've seen in it are a few mosquito larvae that only appeared in the last few days. The hygro. polysperma(I think) that I threw in there seems to like it though, it's turning red.

Well, yeah, they are better than Discus at least.

Pssst, Jadie, Goldfish bad, cichlids goooood.

I'd make a guess it's due to the glass not being set perfectly in the frame. Probably it's just slowly shifted a bit to equalize the force on the glass?

*BANG!* Hehehe, Just kidding, Warren.